


Role Reversal

by emelinelou



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: BAMF Baby Yoda, Din Djarin Needs a Hug, Fluff and Angst, Found Family, Hurt Din Djarin, Hurt/Comfort, Protective Din Djarin, Protective Grogu | Baby Yoda, Slice of Life, basically din gets hurt and baby yoda throws hands, but also:, give me more BAMF baby yoda pls and thank you, space dad din djarin, thats all you need to know, typing that tag made me cackle
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:55:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28392012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emelinelou/pseuds/emelinelou
Summary: Din's pretty sure this whole protection detail thing is only meant to go one way: it's his job to save the kid, not the other way around. Right?.Alternatively: Din lands himself in deep shit, and the kid reacts. A lot.
Relationships: Din Djarin & Grogu | Baby Yoda
Comments: 120
Kudos: 368





	1. The Capture

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> part i: things go well and then really, really badly.
> 
> -set between seasons 1 and 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is the brainchild of all the foreshadowing in season2 that baby yoda was gonna fuck shit up if someone messed with his dad. we didn't really get that scene and my heart deeply desired it. so here we are.

“There’s a bounty out for you, you know.”

Din looks up. It’s a throwaway comment Greef tosses at him over a bowl of soup. The kid, propped up in some ridiculous baby-modified chair Din had seen in the corner of the bar and dragged over, perks up. His ears tilt back, head angling slowly until he’s looking up at Din.

“Out for the kid,” Din says.

“Out for _you_.” Greef drops his spoon into the half-empty bowl, leaning back in his chair. “The job came down from up top a few cycles ago. ‘Mandalorian, full beskar, travels with a small green creature.’”

Din rolls his eyes. Greef doesn’t see this, but it feels good to do it anyway. “Who’d you give the job to?”

Greef has the gall to look offended. The kid glances his way at the indignant sputtering, then swivels his head towards Din again as if for explanation. Din tilts his head down at the kid’s bowl of soup. The kid gets the cue, ears darting back up like he’d forgotten he had food in front of him at all. 

“No one,” Greef says, still looking put out. “I requested they pull it from the listings.”

“And they did?”

Greef shrugs. “I’m sure.”

Unlikely. The Guild isn’t prone to fully retracting any sort of bounty; they wouldn’t drop this one either, regardless of Din’s prior status. They might have pulled the job from Greef’s listing, but Din knows it’s not that simple.

“I’ll keep an eye out.”

“Good. A lot of people would line up for that job. Trust me.”

Din doesn’t, not really, but he knows Greef’s right. He’s done what he’s needed to do to survive, to provide for the Tribe, and that’s occasionally meant earning the sort of enemies that wear grudges like a second skin.

They drop the conversation there as the kid clutches his whole bowl with his two miniscule hands and attempts to dump the rest of the soup down his mouth. Greef tips further back in his chair, laughing loudly as Din takes the bowl a second too late. Most of what’s left of the soup pours onto the kid’s face. He makes a surprised gurgling sound, and Din ignores Greef’s increasingly obnoxious laughter, leaning over to dab the kid off with the end of his cape.

Round eyes watch him, the picture of innocence. “That’s not how we eat,” Din says simply. The kid hums, tilting his head to the side. Greef shoots a knowing look that Din doesn’t acknowledge; instead, Din spends the rest of the meal spooning the kid his food, deciding they’re all better off without another mini disaster.

“Going soft?” Greef says later as he follows them back to the Razor Crest. It’s not the sort of question Din deems worthy of answering. He lets Greef give the kid a last little hug, patting the space between his ears, and the kid hums happily. Din takes him back, tucking the kid in the space under his arm. 

He pauses, considers, then pulls the distress beacon out of one of his pockets. “Give this to Cara.”

Greef eyes the device, turning it over in his hands. “So you are worried about the bounty?”

“No. It’s a precaution.”

Greef nods, but doesn’t seem convinced. “Alright. I’ll pass it over next time I see her.”

“Good.”

With that, he lets the kid wave a last farewell, tiny hands mimicking the motion he’s likely seen humans throw at each other enough times to understand. Greef smiles, big and genuine, and Din feels his stomach twist as the left-side gate lifts back into place, sealing them inside. 

A moment passes. Din looks down at the kid, who looks up at him. He blinks, and gurgles, bright and familiar.

“We’re gonna teach you about spoons.”

The kid makes a rising noise of question, and Din tables it for another time.

.

He doesn’t think about the bounty thing again. He’s busy devoting his time to other tasks, such as a) trying to track down another Mandalorian and b) trying to track down a Jedi-person and c) trying to keep the kid from getting into the sort of trouble they can’t get back out of.

Between those three priorities, there’s not much time for anything else. Din keeps them on the move, laying low and moving fast to avoid any excess attention, and for the most part it works. They get in a couple scrapes, a few close calls, but it always ends the same way: the kid catches on quickly, familiar enough now with these things that he knows to close the hover cradle on his own, and then Din takes care of whatever the threat is and they move on to the next tip or planet or scrap of information pointing them to one of their goals.

After one such encounter - an overambitious mercenary who took one look at Din’s armor and apparently thought it was worth trying to kill him over - they return to the ship and Din plots a course up the Hydian Way. It’s not that he has a set destination in mind as much as he wants to give them a chance to breathe. It’s nice sometimes, to follow a path through established hyperspace; it allows him to drop navigation in favor of other things, like sleeping and checking their supply cache and cleaning his weapons.

He’s sorting through their food rations, plotting the next time they’ll have to land and gather more - it’s sooner than normal, accounting for the kid - when there’s a familiar shuffling sound behind him.

He looks over his shoulder. The kid is standing in the doorway, rocking back and forth.

This happens more and more often too; Din’s not the reassuring type, but he tries his best.

“It’s ok,” he says. “He has no way of tracking us. We’re safe.”

The kid makes a little sound, small, almost doubtful, scooting closer. Din watches, unmoving, as he wobbles over to his leg and taps on Din’s knee.

“I’m fine,” Din says. “It barely hurt.”

Which is only a partial lie. The guy had wielded a sort of club, dense and metallic, and while it wasn’t enough to pose a threat to the beskar, he’d landed a few lucky hits where the armor didn’t cover. Din had given himself the onceover afterwards, locking the door to storage so the kid wouldn’t see the bruises already blooming on his skin. It’s always been a part of the job; it doesn't phase Din, but he’s had to realize overtime that it might phase the kid.

The kid stares at him for a few long moments, eyes big and round, the downward tilt of his ears tugging something in Din’s chest that is still growing used to being tugged at all. He swallows the feeling down.

“Come on,” he says, pulling out one of the ration bars. Food is still the best way he knows to lift the kid’s mood; that, and taking him for a joy ride on the jetpack, which isn’t really an option right now. As expected, the kid’s ears angle up, a signal Din’s learned to interpret as happiness. “Early dinner?”

The kid shakes a bit in his excitement, pittering softly and outstretching his arms. Din grunts, lifting him up with one hand and pushing himself off the floor with the other. They eat in the cockpit, Din watching from the pilot’s seat as the kid munches on a bar and hums quietly to himself. His own ration bar is stale and dry, but it eases the gnawing hunger that he’s long grown familiar with. He eats less, now that the kid’s on board, just in case there’s some emergency and they have to survive off what they have in storage for a while. Besides, kids need nutrients. He’s positive of that one at the very least. He can go hungry, but growing aliens can’t afford to, at least not his.

Besides, the kid’s prone to trouble when he’s hungry. They’ve learned that the hard way, so Din makes sure to keep him well-fed when he can.

Dinner is followed by a lesson in ship controls; the kid’s showed a curiosity for them lately, and Din figures it doesn’t hurt for him to know his way around the cockpit. He’s never really sure how much the kid actually understands, but it’s worth a shot. If he lets the kid sneak off the accelerator bearing again, stashing the little metal ball in his robe, well, no one’s the wiser to it.

They sleep in the storage compartment Din’s converted into a cot, the kid’s satchel hung like a hammock above him. He watches it rock gently, shifting back and forth with the motion of the ship, until the kid starts snoring. Only then does he close his eyes and allow himself to sleep.

.

The Hydian Way takes them past the Mandalore sector. Not close enough that they’d be able to see the planet if they dropped out of hyperspace, but close enough that Din finds his thoughts wandering. To smoke, and death, and the coolness of beskar against his hands as he was jetted off of his home planet. Mandalore was never his home, but the memories still crop up any time he’s in this part of the galaxy.

He doesn’t dwell on it often. It’s part of the past, not worth revisiting. But it sits in the back of his mind as he watches the coordinates flash by, less than a lightyear away.

Sometimes, he thinks the kid can sense these things. Din is staring out the front of the cockpit when there’s a hand on his shin, nails against his armor. He looks down at round eyes and a tilted head, feels a rush of something unidentifiable in his chest, and picks the kid up, placing him in his lap. He doesn’t say anything, watching the stars shoot by, always just out of reach. The kid hums, shifting back against his armor, and so they watch together.

.

They drop out of hyperspace in the Gordian Reach, and dock on the planet Torque. It’s all industry, factories and rusting towers arching into a golden sky. Din decides it’s a satchel sort of planet, wrapping the strap of the bag over his shoulder and tucking it against his hip, lowering the kid inside.

“In and out,” he says. The kid hums in return.

He finds the nearest supply shop and uses a bit of what’s left of his units to buy more ration bars. The ship could use a few small repairs, but it’s nothing he can’t handle, so he pays for a few tools he’s short on before heading to the nearest food stop he can find.

The building is short and squat, built like a mistake, but the food is warm and the kid looks beyond excited as he swallows it down. Din picks up a spoon, holding it out pointedly. The kid looks up, unperturbed, and sticks to his method of slurping from the bowl's rim. 

They’ll try again later.

Din spends his time surveying the bar, making sure no one’s looking too closely. The guests mostly mind their own business, so Din lets the kid stay until he’s done with the stew instead of packing it up and taking it on board like he’s usually tempted to. It’s good, he thinks, that the kid sees the world instead of being holed up on the ship for too long. Not that Din’s the child-rearing expert, far from it, but he thinks that one’s a bit on the common sense side of things.

The kid’s just finishing his stew when Din catches someone eyeing them from the corner of the room, a large Rodian with scales the color of pond scum. Din shifts his weight, leaning forward in his chair, hand sliding down towards his hip. He dips his helmet, an acknowledgement he hopes is read as a warning. The Rodian blinks and stands up.

The kid stops eating as the alien approaches their table, giving a few last gulps before pausing, watching the Rodian from the side of the bowl.

“A Mandalorian,” the Rodian says in Basic, its clicking tones tripping over some of the sounds less fit for the Rodian vocal structure. “It’s been long time since I see one of your kind.”

Din spares a glance for the kid, who slowly lowers the edge of his bowl back to the table and looks up at Din from his low seat.

“I’m just leaving,” Din says, standing up. The kid’s arms are already out, reaching for Din, and he feels a sharp pang of tension as he grabs the kid and puts him back in the satchel, shifting it further back so his cape covers the kid’s face.

“Not looking for work?” the Rodian says. They all smell the same; like vaguely rotting animals, left out in the sun.

“No.”

“That’s too bad. I got a job I need done, will pay hefty sum for it.”

Din hesitates; they’re running out of units, and fast. He doesn’t need beskar payments anymore, but if he’s going to support himself and the kid, it would be nice to have a certain level of financial comfort. 

He remembers what he had said. In and out. Torque is known Hutt territory, and that’s a mess he’s not willing to get involved in, at least not with the kid. He takes a step back.

“Find another guy,” he says. The Rodian’s eyes glint, a reptilian shimmer to them, and Din is preparing for things to escalate when the alien settles for a nod.

“Fine.” Din nods, turning on his heel to head out, when the words follow him. “Better keep an eye on own back.”

Din pauses; he angles his body back at the alien. “What was that?” Years of training kick in, and he sees weak points, alternate exits from the building, places where the Rodian could be hiding a weapon.

The Rodian’s weight shifts, just a fraction. “Not wise, wandering with big bounty and little pet.”

Instinctively, Din’s left hand shifts towards the satchel, blocking access to it. 

“You make a move, I’ll see that it’s your last.”

The Rodian laughs, an almost metallic noise. “Not my move to make.” The alien lifts his hands, the universal sign of surrender, and takes steps backwards until he’s at his table again, lowering himself into his chair. Din doesn’t waste the opportunity. He heads out of the bar and back to the ship, guard up as he pushes past people, one hand still on his holster.

To his surprise, they make it back to the Crest without incident. Only when the gate is closed and they’ve left the atmosphere does Din allow some of the tension to leave his shoulders. He lifts the satchel strap over his helmet, pulling it off and setting it and the kid on the chair.

The kid looks up at him, eyes huge with the question that always follows, the question Din’s begun to interpret as _are we ok_?

“See? In and out,” Din says. The kid makes a high humming noise, and Din is the one to unscrew the accelerator bearing this time, tossing it into the kid’s seat.

“We’re good kid,” he says, and the kid just nods, trusting his word alone as he pops the ball into his mouth. Din has to look away with the way his chest swells; people don’t trust him, not unconditionally, not like this. The weight of it is a feeling, unnameable and more powerful than he particularly enjoys.

It doesn’t fade, and it keeps him awake, and he thinks choosing to hold onto it too terrifying a decision to look at straight on. It’s not one he can grapple with tonight; he locks it away and thinks _later_ , always later.

.

In hindsight, he should have paid more attention. He should have put more weight in the Rodian’s words. He should have looked into the spoken implications instead of writing them off as another once-off they were lucky enough to pull out of. He should’ve done anything but assume things would be ok the way they were; he _never_ assumes things are ok, grew up being taught to always do better, be more, exercise stricter discipline, push through hardships, keep his mask up, his helmet on, at all times.

He lets his guard down, a _fraction_ , without even realizing it or meaning to. He allows himself to get comfortable; he allows himself to feel something eerily close to familiarity, or fondness, or attachment. 

The universe isn’t known to let him have such things. He forgets this, and it’s his own fault.

.

They’re fine for a bit longer. Din follows a lead to some snowy giant of a thing called Hoth; finds nothing but the rubble of an old base and tipped over Imperial ATATs, their armor frozen into the ground. 

The kid uses the head of one of them as a makeshift sort of slide. Din watches as he skitters up the edge of the thing and then slips down the icy front, squealing with delight. He picks the kid up and deposits him on the top again, staying close enough that if something goes wrong, he can grab the kid before he falls. But it’s fine; the kid makes happy noises the whole way down, and Din’s chest feels suspiciously warm for such a cold climate.

Inside the broken down base, he sees nothing of use. A few old holoboards, transmission desks, busted tech that wears the insignia of the Rebel army. It's obvious pretty quickly that they won't find anything here. They head back to the ship, Din letting the kid stretch his legs and follow behind, and a quick glance backwards shows a glum expression tilted at the ground.

“We can visit later,” Din says once they're back on board, surprising himself that he means it. The kid's head pops up and he makes a happy noise, angling the grabby motion in Din’s direction. Din huffs, leaning down and picking him up as he charts a course out of the atmosphere.

They stop at Felucia next. He’d gotten a tip that the Jedi used to conduct operations out of the planet, and while he’d rather get intel from one of his own kind, he’s not willing to pass up a potential opportunity. 

Felucia is all greens and blues, lush forests with bright, flowering foliage. The kid likes this one too. He paws at the ferns, oohing at the soft light they emit. Din lets them stall a bit, keeping his eyes on the horizon as the kid wanders between leaves and trunks, sounding happier than Din can imagine being just hanging around some weird plants.

The Felucians turn out to be mostly farmers; most of them don’t speak Basic, but they take a liking to the kid, bending down to pet his head and giving them a sack of local produce before they head back to the ship. It’s weird, getting hospitable treatment from people who would normally shutter their windows at the sight of him. The kid just coos happily, perched in Din’s arms and basking in the attention.

“Alright, that’s enough of that,” Din says, thoughts straying to contact poisons and the faint possibility that one of these aliens somehow knows about the bounty on the kid’s head. “Thank you for the, uh, gifts.” 

The Felucians must get the gist of it, because they nod and give these overexaggerated waves that look frankly ridiculous; maybe they're playing it up for the kid. Whatever the reason, the kid loves it, sending back the gesture with little hands dancing in the air. 

By the time they’re back in the ship, Jedi-leads seeming nonexistent, the kid’s practically glowing. “You like Felucia kid?”

The kid chirps back, tapping excitedly on his vambraces. “Big surprise.”

They eat some of the fruit for dinner; it’s delicious, but tinted a deep magenta that stains the kid’s mouth and most of the lower half of his face. It’s enough to steal a laugh out of Din, who spends a considerable amount of time scrubbing the kid’s face until the red’s finally gone.

Back to the cot for the night, and Din falls asleep watching the gentle swinging of the kid’s bed again, the rhythm of the motion in tune with his pulse.

It becomes a pattern, warm and familiar and - dare he say it - _domestic_. If he thinks about it too hard, and he actively tries not to, he retreats back into himself, not comfortable with the dynamic they’re forging, fast and familial and distressingly easy. He wakes up to the kid, and spends the day looking after the kid, and shuttles the kid around anytime he goes planetside, and makes sure the kid’s always taken care of, and it’s become the founding element of his routine worryingly quickly. 

So he doesn’t think about it. Surely that’s the smartest course of action.

Surely.

.

He decides the next day to head back to Nevarro; he’s asked the others to keep an ear to the ground, see if they get any news of Mandalorian activity. It’ll be worth it to check in with them. Felucia’s not far from the Ash Worlds either, where Nevarro sits, smoldering and dark. It’s on their way, an easy enough stop to restock and gather intel and let the kid see some familiar faces.

They’re close to halfway there when Din’s scanner beeps; he expects a maintenance reading - the cooling ducts have been acting up recently - but what he gets is a proximity warning, another ship in hyperspace close to his own.

It’s not altogether strange. This region of the galaxy gets more visitors than it used to, stray Imperials looking for work or New Republic officers trying to clean things up. Eventually, the reading disappears as the ship either passes him up or drops out of hyperspace. 

The rest of the short trip is uneventful, and soon he's prepping to disengage the hyperspace thrusters. Din looks over his shoulder; the kid is staring out the cockpit window, little mouth open as he tracks the stars with wide eyes. Din turns back to the control panels, definitely _not smiling_ , waiting until they approach the grid coordinates before dropping out of hyperspace.

Nevarro is as it always is: a dark, rocky marble. The kid has learned to recognize it at this point and lets out a happy gurgle behind him. “It won’t be a long visit,” Din says, but the kid just keeps on humming. 

This is when the proximity warning flashes again. Din glances down and is surprised to see not one but two ships lighting up on the sensors. He leans forward, trying to catch a glimpse out of his cockpit. He only sees one, but it’s dark and large enough that he can tell it houses a crew, not just a single pilot. The shape of it is a strange, angular thing, like it was hastily built, pieced out of ship remains that don’t belong together. It doesn’t descend towards Nevarro. It sits, stationary, the front tip pointed at the Crest.

Din has a bad feeling.

“Kid,” he says, but before he can get any further, the Crest shudders violently. Din’s familiar with the specific rattle. He'd place his money on it being some sort of hook system, likely already fastened into the ship's hull. He knows what this means; he’s played the motion out before, reeling in catches in deep space.

Instinct tells him to gun the hyperspace, engage the primary engines, jet out of reach before it's too late. But he doesn’t know the exact caliber of the hooks, if a sudden thrust forward would rip the hull open, pressurizing the whole ship and killing them instantly. It’s not worth it to find out; if it was only his life he was chancing, maybe. But not the kid. _Not the kid_.

His comm crackles to life. “Mandalorian,” an unfamiliar voice says. It echoes in the cockpit. Behind him, he hears the kid let out the smallest of noises, soft and uncertain, and he feels his fists clench on the thrusters. “Your hull is breached. You have nowhere to run. Surrender yourself to us, or die.”

He’s spoken an iteration of the same words before. It’s a pick-up, clean and simple, a bounty job someone apparently hired two whole crews to execute. Most likely pirates. Possibly affiliated with the Hutts. It could be anyone paying; Imperials, the New Republic, an adversary he’s faced with deeper pockets than expected. But Din picks up on the one part that matters: that they’re asking for him, and not the kid.

Making up his mind is easy, in the end. He engages jammers. He diverts power to shields. He arms front deflectors. He stands up, and turns around, and grabs the kid in one quick motion. 

“I need you to listen to me,” he says. The cockpit doors slide open, and the ship rocks violently, and Din clutches the kid to his chest and doesn’t stop moving. 

“You are going to take this. You’re going to press it as soon as you eject. You won’t need to steer, so don’t touch anything.”

He doesn’t look down at the kid, can’t afford it. But he hears the gurgle, confused, scared, and even beskar isn’t enough to deflect the way it stabs into his chest. The storage doors slide open; still he doesn’t stop, reaching into his pocket for the distress signal, hoping Greef was true to his word and gave it to Cara. She’ll know what to do. He trusts her, even with the kid.

The ship tips forward, not with blaster fire, but with what he guesses is another hook. Or maybe a docking device. He doesn’t have time. The back of the storage room tapers off into to a separate compartment, the ship’s one escape pod. Din taps the control panel, and the door slides open with a hiss.

Only then does he look at the kid, as he lowers him into the seat of the escape pod. Big, brown eyes track his movements, ears tilted down, little hands already stretching out towards Din again as soon as he lets go. There is a cord around Din’s throat, squeezing tighter and tighter.

“I can’t go with you.”

The kid tries to squirm off the chair, but Din doesn’t let him. One hand to his small chest is all it takes to stop the movement, and Din uses the other to engage the safety harness, locking the kid in place. At this, the kid makes another noise, one Din does his best to ignore; his little hands reach with more desperation, clawing at the air between them.

“You’ll be ok,” Din says. He doesn’t trust the kid to activate the distress signal on his own, so he takes it, presses on the one red button at its center until it begins flashing, and slips it into the kid’s robe. 

There is no time for anything else. Din wants to grab, to hold, to tuck the kid under his arm and pretend that it’ll be enough. But these hunters aren’t out for the kid. Din isn’t selfish enough to forget this. The kid won’t suffer, not because of him.

Din steps back. He reseals the doors from the outside. He selects emergency eject, engaging the pod’s thrusters to track to the nearest gravitational pull, the rocky exterior of Nevarro. He catches one last glimpse of raised hands, downcast ears, wide eyes bright with something like panic, and then the pod shoots off into space, hurtling towards Nevarro.

Din runs back to the cockpit. He primes blasters, and engages thrusters, and unjams the comms. “Come and get me,” he says, and hears a snarled “wrong choice” from the other end of the line. His chest is splintering; he holds it together with sheer will alone.

He doesn't slam the acceleration, not wanting to rip the hooking, but he pushes it enough that he feels the drag of the engine trying to comply. There's a warning creak, the whole ship groaning as opposing forces pull from either end. The pirates retaliate with blaster fire, a few shots sparking off metal and echoing in the cockpit. Din swipes hard at the steering device, throwing the Crest into a barrel roll despite its protests. He knows it’s not a fight he’ll win, not with the rigging. But the longer he can keep the ships occupied, the less likely they’ll be to chase a stray escape pod to a planet they have no business on.

A blast hits dangerously close to the cockpit, lighting it up red. Din tilts the steering upwards, propelling the Crest into an arch so he can see the ships targeting him. The second one looks much like the first, significantly larger but bolted together in the same sloppy yet effective fashion. He finally gets eyes on the hooks, trailing out from the front of the second ship. They’re long, barbed things, and they keep him from creating any sort of distance between himself and the other ships. He fires, the shots ricocheting pointlessly off of their armed shield system. Pirates with good tech. It really isn't his day. 

He pulls the brakes on the Crest, jerking it to an abrupt stop. He has a better chance of fighting them off man to man than getting himself incinerated in space. They’ll have to board the ship anyway to get at him; the cables look strong, but not strong enough to tow his ship through space without eventually snapping.

“It’s not worth the fight,” the voice says over the comm. Din doesn’t answer, letting the ship stall while he heads down to the weapons storage. He arms his blasters and throws his rifle over his back, tucking two vibroblades into his belt just in case. Taking aim at the back hangar door, he charts the most likely course of events; that the bigger ship will pull him in, retracting the hooks and swallowing the Crest whole. They'll trap him in their hangar. They'll board the Crest. He'll do what he can to put up a good fight.

Sure enough, he feels the jerky tug as his ship is reeled backwards. 

Distantly, he thinks that he should’ve thrown food rations in with the kid.

The Crest shutters to a stop. The lack of engaged landing gear leaves it scraping against the bottom of the other ship’s hangar. He listens to the awful whine of it, and waits. There are a few moments of anticipation; then, his back hangar door is ripped off its hinges and a flurry of bodies pour in, blasters at the ready.

He sucks in one short breath, holds it steady in his ribs.

He disintegrates the first row easily enough with his rifle. But there’s too many. He switches to his blaster, delivering quick shots to heads and chests and thighs. They flood the hull; he takes a few steps backward as blaster fire pings off his armor, jolting him and throwing off his aim.

They’re close enough to reach now. He slaps his vambraces, engaging his flamethrower and scorching the pirates to his left. Their screams are loud and present. With his other hand, he slams the butt of his blaster down on a temple, then swings out at a throat, then reaches for his vibroblade and plunges metal into the space between collarbones. It’s quick, and efficient, and bloody. But he’s only able to dodge blows for so long; he’s outnumbered. They all know it. There’s a lucky blaster shot to the unarmored length of his triceps, exposed under his right pauldron. He winces at the heat of it, fighting the instinct to drop his blade and curl his arm against his side. The moment of stall is enough that they overrun him. He’s tackled forcefully against the wall; he swings out with the vibroblade, slamming it into fleshy jugular, but is only forced back into the same spot again by another body, then another, then another. They find the weak spots between his armor, something sharp and hot piercing just above his hip, a blunt, bludgeoning blow swung out against the uncovered side of his torso. He feels the distinct cracking of ribs, pain flooding up his abdomen. He kicks out, heel against what feels like knee, and hears pained howling. The closest attacker backs off, and it’s enough that he has a moment to try to shake off the others.

Before he can, something clicks around his left wrist. He looks down and realizes what’s happening a second too late. He yanks his other wrist back, but there’s too many of them. Someone manages to snap a binder on his right wrist too, and the click of metal activates the electromagnet. The wrist cuffs immediately snap together, forcing his hands out in front of him. He tries to pull them apart, but the magnet is too strong.

This is when he knows it’s over; he doesn't care, throwing what he can at them anyway. He lashes out with his head, smashing his helmet against the nearest face he can find in the blur of motion. Bright green blood bursts against the outside of his helmet, partially blinding him. He’s shoved to the ground, face first. His ribs scream. He uses the momentum to roll himself over onto his back, kicking out with his feet and landing lucky blows on the nearest figures he can see. 

He hears the whine of it first; the familiar hum of an electric weapon. He tilts his head, sees the long spear with a tipped, sparking edge. It’s an electric prod of some type, charged to the brim. There’s no chance to roll away. The tip presses against his neck, right under the bottom of his helmet, and his vision bursts into a million shades of white and red and yellow, his body thrashing as current floods his veins. The colors churn and mix into a dark, swelling black that pulls him under.

Stupidly, pointlessly, he thinks of the kid. Then, he thinks of nothing at all.

.

Somewhere across the galaxy, it’s like the other shoe finally drops.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> drop a kudos or leave a comment so i can respond and we can talk about how much we love our little emotional support tv show:)


	2. The Separation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> part ii: things are pretty much just bad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as promised, chapter 2! i'm undecided on how i feel about this chapter and put off posting it last week. but here we are - pls let me know what you think!

Din decides pretty early on that whatever merry band of misfits captured him are close to the stupidest lifeforms he’s ever encountered in this whole hellscape of a galaxy.

For starters, they keep him shackled in the corner of their brig. Shackled. It’s very old fashioned - effective, Din won’t lie, because whatever keeps the bindings tight on his wrists and fastened to the wall is too strong for Din to work through - but still.  _ Shackled _ .

To make matters worse, they take the armor while he’s unconscious and stack it in a pile on the other side of the room, where Din can waste whole stretches of time staring at it and formulating plans on how to get to it when the chance arises.

They leave the helmet on, which Din is desperately relieved by but is willing to admit is a less-than-intelligent choice. One of the guys explains it as he comes in to throw baseless insults at Din, which they all seem to enjoy doing a bit too much.

“Don’t get too attached to it,” the pirate sneers. “Only reason it’s still on is because Boss wants to be the one to do the honors.”

“Boss?” Din asks, playing dumb. He doesn’t much care who’s at the end of this chain of command, or where they’re headed, or what pirate gang this even  _ is _ . But these things might hold clues to his escape, so he plays the part.

The guy just laughs. “Nice try. But don’t worry, you’ll meet him soon enough.”

Yeah, because Din was  _ very  _ worried. Another reason these idiots are the worst? They’re obviously of the kind that takes a bit of extra pleasure in roughing up their bounties before delivery. It must be the only reason he’s not in a carbonite slab right now; he’s sure they have the tech for it and are choosing instead to keep him chained in the corner like an animal. It’s a power trip. It always is with these guys. So when the pirate gets too close, aims two smart kicks against Din’s side - pain flares hot and white and he bites it down - he swings out with his feet, knocking them through the pirate’s legs.

The guy falls to the ground, and Din can’t really use his hands, but he’s not going to let that stop him. With the tiny bit of space the shackles allow him, he wraps his legs around the guy’s torso, swings himself up so he’s on top of him, and loops his hands around the guy’s neck, the tail of the chain following behind his bindings and tightening around throat.

Whoops, looks like the guy can’t breathe. His face goes red as his hands scrabble for purchase, and Din feels approximately zero percent bad.

It doesn’t last long though. They must hear the commotion from outside, because two other pirates storm in, look dumb and surprised for a second, and then run up to help. Pirate number one gets a headbutt to the knee. Not Din’s best choice: his already pulsing head goes blurry with the sudden motion, pain flashing lights in the edges of his eyesight. But bone snaps under the force of beskar, and the pirate howls and drops. 

Pirate number three uses his miniscule brain, hanging back when he sees what happens to his buddy. Din watches, ignoring the increasingly distressed choking noises underneath him. The guy runs to the side wall, grabbing a familiar looking prod. He engages the charge, and Din’s body remembers what is still fuzzy in his mind: unbelievable pain lancing through his limbs, and then darkness.

His head pounds. His lungs heave. He clenches his jaw and tightens the chain and tries to kick out at the side of the prod, but the pirate holds tight. “Mando scum,” he growls, and then the glowing tip presses against his neck, right under the rim of his helmet, and the shock arches through every cell, every vein, every part of him that knows how to feel pain, even the ones he didn’t think could.

His mind is a tunnel, and he is pushed forcefully back into its depths.

.

It’s almost funny, that he dreams. Din isn’t prone to dreaming. Sleep has always been just that: a moment to recharge the body, and nothing more. But here, his mind wanders. It gives him a memory, something soft and warm and familiar, as if the universe is apologizing for its refusal to change.

The memory is this:

The kid has torn his smock again. It’s a small rip, not too much cause for concern, and Din’s not even really sure when it happened. Somewhere between their close call on Tatooine and their close call on Kalassia and their close call on Shola. Somewhere between Din grabbing him and running or shielding him with a beskar-armed chest or hiding him behind some conspicuous plant while he dealt with the attackers.  _ Somewhere  _ between the general mess that is their current lives, the kid had frayed the bottom end of his robe and it bothers Din like a splinter in the back of his head, small and persistent. 

Din remembers watching Omera use tiny needles and a bold blue thread to mend one of the Sorgan kid’s shirts. He remembers watching his mom do the same when he was a child, patching together ripped sleeves and admonishing, always too gently, “remember, treat your clothes like you’d treat a friend.”

Din feels incredibly out of place, asking for sewing needles and brown thread. It seems an out-of-date request at any of the larger planets, but the Outer Rim has no shortage of planets that have stayed small and relatively un-industrialized. He finds one, with a shop just for hand-sewn clothing, and wastes an inordinate amount of time finding the exact shade of brown. The kid peeks up from the satchel, sounding curious. Din looks down at big eyes and a half visible face, shining at the array of colors in front of them.

“What do you think?” he asks, grabbing the small spiel of tan and holding it in front of the kid. His little hands reach over the satchel, grabbing the thread and holding it closer. He opens his mouth.

“ _ Not  _ for eating.”

He closes his mouth. But the thread seems a near perfect match, so Din pays and heads back to the ship and as the  _ Crest  _ follows a course off-planet, Din figures out how to fit ridiculously small needles in his gloved hands, how to move them just right to create small little patterns of thread.

He tests it out on an old blanket he finds in storage, only calling on the kid once he feels he’s mastered the basics. “Come on, let’s fix that dress of yours, ok?”

The kid hums, always inexplicably happy to be in Din’s lap. Din gives him his favorite metal ball as a distraction, but the kid seems more fascinated by the sewing, eyes wide and mouth a perfect little  _ oh  _ of wonder as he watches Din trail a small line up the tear in his clothes. It’s, oddly peaceful. The hum of the ship is familiar, and the kid is a warm weight against his side, and the task requires an attention to detail that makes it strangely rewarding. 

When the little tear is mended, the kid makes a small hum of excitement. Tiny hands latch onto Din’s finger, and he’s careful to move the needle out of the way. “There ya go, kid. Good as new.”

Din goes to put the kid back down, grabbing him by his sides, but the kid immediately protests, digging little nails into his arm and making a show with a loud gurgle. Din sighs. “Fine. But don’t touch anything.”

The kid hums happily, and most definitely  _ does  _ touch things, but Din keeps his head angled slightly so he can make sure it’s nothing too important. When he reaches a hand at the emergency brake button, Din interferes with a small nudge. “Not that one.”

The kid makes a pouty noise, but then distracts himself with his own reflections in the shine of Din’s beskar, making faces and then squealing as his reflection follows suit. He keeps looking up at Din, as if to check that he’s watching, and as they hurtle through space it takes all of Din’s energy not to give in to the smile fighting its way onto his face.

.

Din wakes up. The memory feels distant and cold. His body aches, and his mouth tastes like copper, and the kid is safe. Through the distant patches of memory he can bring up from his capture - his vibroblade in a neck, blood on his visor, the crunch of bone - one is clear. Staring from the other side of an escape pod as the kid made a noise close to crying. Hitting the eject button and watching for a moment as the pod plunged towards Nevarro. Knowing that, despite whatever happened to Din, the kid would be ok.

_ The kid would be ok.  _

It’s enough. He adjusts himself against the wall, wincing at the pain, and it’s enough.

.

It’s hard to measure how much time passes. Harder still when he gets less visitors. Apparently news spread of the whole trying to choke someone incident; the pirates keep their distance now. Or at least, most of them do. The ballsier members of the crew still come in, and Din grows used to their faces. There are four that prefer to take a more hands on approach, even after his attack. He gives them nicknames in his head: Dumb, Dumber, Dumbest, and  _ Kung _ , a little something he’s picked up from the Hutts.

Kung is the worst. A red mass of an alien Din can’t pin to any one species. Big-headed and beady-eyed and  _ way  _ too fond of using the electric prod. It makes time blur into something even more unreal, the measure of awake spent relearning how to move his body and the stretches of sleep largely exhausting and restless. He doesn’t know much about electrocution, but he’s sure his body can only handle so much of it in such a short sitting.

Wherever he’s going, the final intent must be his death. It’s the only reason they’d be so careless with their force.

Or, again, that they’re brainless. Din shouldn’t write that possibility off, as it explains most everything else they do.

When he does find a stretch of lucid time, he spends it one of three ways. 

Sometimes he’ll use it to categorize his injuries. Most of his capture is a fuzzy memory, bits of it muddled and lost. But he has wounds to sport, and they tell the parts of the story he remembers most. A shot to the underside of his arm, which has left a now crusted dark patch on his clothes. With his hands bound in front of him, the only thing he can do is look at the spot and guess what’s underneath; likely an infection, judging by the hot itch of skin and the lancing pain that shoots up his arm when he moves it too quickly. He has what he guesses is a similar wound above his hip. This one he’s able to get a look at, using the edges of his fingers to pull at the fabric above his pants. The wound is small and inflamed, a circle of red fanning out of the blaster point. Definitely infected. 

Worst though is his abdomen. He’s willing to bet cracked or broken ribs, with the way his whole side aches persistently and his breaths jolt in pain if they’re too deep. He can’t get a good look at them, but he runs the edges of his palms over his torso and feels unfamiliar indents and a swollen exterior. Probably broken.

That’s not to mention the bone-deep exhaustion from the shocking sessions, or the singed feeling of his skin where the prod tip was applied. He’s going to kill each and every one of these pirates, and he’s probably going to enjoy it.

When he’s not cataloguing injuries he’s charting a plan. Nothing concrete, but he runs through courses of action in his head anyway so that if he’s given an opportunity, his muddled brain doesn’t have to think. He’ll revert back to a pre-programmed set of steps, and his body will take over where his brain feels fuzzy and dim. Step one is always to grab the armor. Step two is usually to bolt one of the two entrances shut. Step three is his favorite: destroy everything in his path. Obviously. He’ll trace his way down the ship following the hum of the engine to the back, where the hangar is probably located and the  _ Crest _ hopefully still docked. He will shoot out into hyperspace, or maybe stick around to scatter the pieces of the pirates’ freighter into deep space. Then he will go back to Nevarro, and find the kid, and something inside him that’s been knocked out of place will finally readjust.

This is where the third train of thought always comes into the play. Alone and shackled and worn to exhaustion, he thinks of the kid. Did the escape pod make it to Nevarro? Was the landing too rough? Din had engaged the safety harness, right? Would Cara know to follow the distress beacon? Would she find the kid in one piece? Would she remember that he prefers bone broth over chowder? Or that he doesn’t like sleeping alone? Or that he hasn’t quite mastered spoons yet? 

Sometimes, when Din’s brain feels particularly muddled, the thoughts trail somewhere else entirely, somewhere decidedly harder to turn away from once he’s there: would she know what to do, how to help the kid, if Din didn’t make it back? Din’s not usually prone to dramatics, so it must be the infection talking, or some part of his brain fried by the electricity. He allows himself to consider it, and then it’s like he can’t stop. Would someone else step up to fill whatever role he’s carved out as caretaker of the kid? Or, more likely, would they carve out their own spot, far away from Din’s scattered attempts at - what,  _ parenting _ ? Would they do better than Din ever could, learn to really talk to the kid, to show him their face, to give him an upbringing Din simply isn’t cut out for?

Maybe this is the universe’s way of reminding Din of the cold truth of it all: that he is not the sort of person who gets to feel belonging, and that he’s certainly not the sort of person who could ever give that feeling to someone else. He doesn’t know when the lie began, when he convinced himself that maybe he  _ could  _ be good for the kid, in some strange, unpredictable way. But he can only really see it now, with nothing but his own thoughts, black and thick like tar, to occupy himself.

He wants, desperately, to be back with the kid. To see big eyes and tilted ears and the little curious glances he steals when Din lifts the corner of his helmet to eat. But suddenly it seems starkly unfair, almost selfish. This can’t be what the kid wants. 

Can it?

Dumb, Dumber, and Dumbest walk in as a trio, already laughing as they crack knuckles like some goons acting the part of someone tougher. Din is resigned to what comes next: in his head, he is a million lightyears away.

The kid will be fine, he reminds himself as they step closer. Even if Din can’t make it back to him. Maybe  _ because  _ Din can’t make it back to him. If Din has to choose, he’ll always choose what’s best for the kid. If it’s at his expense, then Din will have to live with that too.

A kick is aimed at his side. 

This is the Way.

.

This time, the dream is short. A fusion of mismatched memories. He is a child, and the sounds of explosions surround him, and his parents just died. His parents just died, and he is pressed against a stranger’s chest, and he doesn’t want to feel the way he feels ever again.

They give him his first helmet when he is still young. They teach him how to fight. How to kill. He is good at it. Very good. They tell him this, and it fills something in him that is empty and impossibly large.

He tells himself that he does what needs to be done. It’s the truth. He earns his armor. He grows comfortable in the shadows. He learns that distance is what protects him, and that attachment can grow unchecked into the most dangerous weakness of them all. 

He meets the kid. He risks his life. He shares his rations. He buys a satchel. He talks to him. He feeds him. He learns to sew. He tries to be softer. He tries to be better. He does things he knows he shouldn’t.

He is stupid enough to be surprised by how much he cares, how large this weak spot has grown, when he’s helped it along every step of the way. It is his own fault. He sees the kid’s arms reaching out at him, little hands clenching and unclenching, and turns away from the escape pod. Again and again, he turns away, and it sits like a boulder in his chest.

.

Din can tell something is different the second the pirates walk into the room. It’s Kung and Dumbest and two unnamed faces. They all look agitated. Din’s brain feels foggy, but not so foggy that he can’t see fingers tapping against thighs and jaws clenched tight. 

“Who did you call?”

Din tries to make sense of that. He can’t. “What?”

Kung steps closer, their whole body strung. “Who did you call? Don’t play dumb,  _ Mando _ .”

“I didn’t call anyone.”

“What is it, a tracker? You have a tracker on you?”

“I don’t - “

“Search him.”

Din is pinned to the ground. His body aches to retaliate, but he knows better than to do that now. This is something new; he’s not willing to test it yet.

Hands pat his back, dig into his pockets, and Din fights the urge to kick and punch and break. “He’s clean,” Dumbest finally says. The hands leave. Din forces himself to breathe

Kung takes a step closer. Their eyes burn like small flames in a thick skull. “How did they find us?”

Din can’t keep up. “How did - I didn’t send any - “

The kick is expected, but it blows into already torn ribs and Din’s vision blackens from the corners in, a backwards rippling that leaves the group of pirates clear in the center.

“Don’t  _ kriffing  _ lie!” Kung spits. “Get me the Stinger,” he throws over his shoulder. Din’s chest heaves; the pirates look at each other, vaguely on edge.

“He already got it once today, don’t you think - “

“ _ Now _ .”

Din watches as two of the pirates skitter off, heading to the prod. 

“I’m going to ask you again,” Kung says. Din sees: an exposed jugular, an anger that means distraction, a positioning a step too close, right in Din’s range. “How did they find us?”

“How did who - “

Kung steps closer. Din measures: severity of attack: lethal, time required to execute: three seconds, expected retaliation: severe.

The pirate behind Kung holds the prod at the ready. Kung takes it and angles it towards Din and says, “I can think of more creative ways to use this thing.” It’s a threat, clear and likely meant to intimidate him. Din is way past things like  _ intimidation _ .

“Yeah, me too,” he says, and it pieces together just as he telegraphed it in his mind. In one burst of motion, he uses his feet to smack the base of the prod out of Kung’s hands. He relies on surprise to make the alien’s grip weak, and it works. The rod drops, skitters and rolls towards Din. He can hardly move his arms, his wrists bound at a shared point, but he can still grab the pole with scrabbling fingers. He whips it around in his hands in one quick motion and sees a flash of shock on Kung’s face before the prod tip embeds itself in his neck.

He goes down instantly, thrashing, and the satisfaction is hot and nauseating. Din’s brain works to churn forward, but he’s been running on nothing but pain and lukewarm water for however long he’s been here, and it shows. His fingers are like lead, and he tries to pull the prod back out as Kung gurgles awfully, but it doesn’t budge.

He’s shoved back into the corner with rough hands. Someone removes the prod; Din can only tell because the thrashing noise stops. His head is banged against the wall. A foot stomps on his shin. There is a horrible anxious chatter that amplifies until it rattles inside of his skull, and Din thinks he twists someone’s ankle or snaps someone’s wrist before there is a sudden and flaming pain circling his neck, under his helmet. Fingers wrapped around his throat; he can’t breathe. He kicks out but his foot meets tough skin, and when his brain finally connects the dot he realizes it’s Kung.

The alien bleeds sluggishly from the neck, but their eyes burn hot and alive. “I don’t go down like some little human,  _ Mando _ ,” they growl. Din’s vision blackens, his lungs burning with need.

So. Possible miscalculation on Din’s part; he barely has time to think of the kid,  _ of the kid, dammit _ , before the grip tightens, Kung’s other hand arches and is handed that same  _ kriffing prod _ , and the tip burns hot and angry against Din’s ribs.

.

There is no dream this time. No memory sent his way. There is only darkness, and somewhere in his stomach, the strangest pull. A rope around his waist, attached to something far away, tugging and tugging and tugging. Pulling him closer even as he’s dragged further and further away. The rope tightens, and shortens, and snaps.

.

No one visits him the following day. He thinks it’s the following day. It gives him a chance to run the conversation back, pick up whatever pieces Kung had let fall.

_ How did they find us _ , they’d said. That much Din remembers. Being searched for a tracker, pinned to the ground, and then possibly strangled? His neck aches, and for a horrible moment, he’s sure that they’ve taken the helmet.

But the weight of it is heavy and familiar; he lets out a breath, and tries to think.

It’s unlikely that anyone has come for him. More than unlikely, it’s impossible. No one else got a look at the pirates, and the kid is safe on Nevarro – has to be safe on Nevarro, or it’s all been for nothing – and there is no long list of people who would feel galvanized enough by Din’s capture to attempt some sort of rescue mission. Even if there was, they’d have nothing to go off of. Din’s known this from the beginning; he either gets out of this himself, or not at all. The latter seems more and more likely now than it did even a couple, what, hours ago? Days? Weeks? It hurts to swallow and Din’s stomach has long since given up begging for food and he’s having trouble stringing his memories together in any resemblance of something linear, or something that makes sense.

He feels almost kind, that he doesn’t leave his bounties to sit and stew, hungry and alone. Carbonite is much more forgiving.

He blinks; how much time has passed? Unsure. He feels that misplaced pull in his stomach again, an unidentifiable feeling that isn’t so much bad as it is out of place, like someone’s tugging on a muscle he didn’t know he had, fastening an invisible cord around him, even as he feels himself drifting further and further away.

He’s not afraid to admit it anymore. He misses the kid. Time feels long and pointless without him, and he tries to grab at the memories from before but comes up dry. Din doesn’t cry; Din  _ never  _ cries. He presses his helmet against the floor and squeezes his eyes shut and swallows down something massive and stays like that until the darkness surrounds him again.

.

When he wakes up, it’s to an alarm blaring. At first, his brain can’t pinpoint the sound to anything identifiable; he just knows it’s loud, and obnoxious, and rams against the inside of his skull.

Then, the entire ship shakes. He’s thrown forward, the shackles rattling as they keep him from going too far. Suddenly, he’s wide awake. The ship is being attacked.  _ The ship is being attacked _ .

He won’t get a chance like this again; even as he knows this, it’s like his body won’t cooperate. He feels sluggish all over, even as he glances at the armor and then back at the shackles, bolted into the wall. He presses his feet against the metal, pushing out as hard as he can and yanking backwards with his hands. Nothing budges. His head spins. He tries again, but the ship slants suddenly to the side, and his feet slip.

A new alarm joins the other one; perfect.

He readjusts his foot, this time trapping some of the chain underneath to make the space he needs to pull shorter. He puts all his weight in leaning backwards, the force of it burning in his wrists, but not enough to snap the bindings. He glances at the door; no one’s come in yet, but he knows it won’t be long.

Biting his bottom lip, he presses the base of his thumb against the binding, then presses his hand against the floor and pushes as hard as he can. His thumb pops; he throws the pain somewhere he won’t think about it, and slides his dislocated thumb further towards his palm, making his hand smaller. He braces his feet against the wall again, and pushes, and  _ pushes _ , and just as he feels his hand slide the slightest bit, the door crashes open behind him.

He’s starting to think the world really does just hate him.

“Grab him,” Kung orders. There are four others, including Dumb and Dumbest. Their eyes are all blown wide, and their movements are quick and scattered. Din’s seen this enough times to recognize it easily; fear.

Dumb and two of the others run straight to him; this time, they pull out blasters aimed at his head (seriously?) and chest and shoulder. He expects a taunt or two, but they’re silent as they hold him against the wall and keep him there with threat of blasters humming between them. Din finds he’s more concerned with the others. He watches as the alarm screams and the ship lurches awfully and Kung and Dumbest close the door and bolt it from the inside. “You two,” he says, facing Din. “Man the door, I’ll stick with the prisoner.”

They switch spots in a quick shuffle, and Din doesn’t ask, just lets them scurry around as the alarm, abruptly, flashes into silence. The constant hum of the engine flicks off. The overhead lights give one last surge before shutting off with a definitive  _ click _ . There is a second of total darkness; Din tenses to fight.

Then, the back-up lights click on, filling the room with a dim red glow. Still, no one says anything. Din’s heart is loud and present against his neck.

There are a few moments of stillness. Then, the door rattles. The pirates step backwards a bit, blasters angled outwards. The door rattles again, but the bolt holds. The rattling stops. Din watches as the pirates look at each other, uneasy.

Kung opens their mouth to say something, but before they can, the room fills with the sound of ripping metal. Din blinks: the door folds in on itself, crushing inwards like a ball of foil. It shouldn’t be possible; it  _ isn’t  _ possible. But it’s tossed aside like a used can, slamming against the back wall.

The two pirates at the front waste no time; they point their blasters out, but before they can fire, they are lifted into the sky ­–  _ lifted into the sky _ – and slam against the ceiling with a horrible sounding crack. They are dropped to the floor, and don’t move again.

There’s a feeling in Din’s chest, a feeling like he knows what’s about to happen; he’s only seen something like this once before. But it doesn’t make sense. It  _ can’t  _ make sense, because it isn’t possible. The remaining pirates push closer to Din, and he almost doesn’t feel them, doesn’t hear Kung shouting orders over the rush of blood in his ears.

It can’t be, it  _ can’t be _ –

There is the smallest noise, a high little gurgle that echoes into the room, and then, as if nothing out of the ordinary is happening, the  _ kid _ shuffles in, big ears and all. His eyes find Din and his ears shoot upwards, the gurgle becoming a familiar coo that Din feels squeezing his lungs. Little hands stretch outwards and a laugh somehow strangles itself out of Din and Kung shoves the tip of his blaster right in the space under his helmet.

“Step any closer and he dies.”

The kid tilts his head, and blinks. Big eyes narrow; Din’s blood goes suddenly cold.

“Don’t –“ he tries to say, but it’s too late. The pirate to the right of him makes an awful noise, and Din doesn’t look but hears as his body crashes against the back wall with an echoing snap. Dumb goes to fire his blaster out at the kid – Din’s whole heart shoots up his throat – but his hand suddenly freezes. He screams as the hand, as if wrenched out of his control, swivels and points out his own chest. The blast goes off, burning a hole in his ribcage. He crumbles to the floor, and in a second it’s only Din, and Kung, and the kid.

_ The kid _ .

“Just let –“ Din starts, but Kung cuts him off.

“Fine,  _ rat _ , have it your way.”

Din hears the trigger click, but nothing happens; the kid’s eyes are closed, face twisted in the middle. He stretches his hands out, angles one the slightest bit, and the blaster is ripped out of Kung’s hand, hard enough that Din hears the crack of bone. Kung howls, and the blaster is tossed into the corner before it finally goes off, shooting uselessly against the wall.

“What kind of –“

Before Kung can say anything else, the kid’s hands form tiny fists, curling in on themselves. Kung makes a low gurgling noise, and Din spares a glance for him. He’s clutching at his throat, eyes bulging, and Din sees a flash of Cara mimicking the action cycles ago, when the kid had mistaken her as a threat. Invisible hands, wrapped around throat. The same hands squeeze tighter around Kung’s, and the alien is lifted off the ground, scrabbling for air.

Din feels the slide of something cold and unwelcome in the room, making the air around them thick. His heart hammers. “Kid,” he tries, but it comes out as a wheeze. The kid’s eyes squeeze, an unfamiliar anger in the lines of his little face, and it strikes Din as horribly, tangibly wrong. He tries to scoot closer, but he’s still trapped against the wall.

“Kid,  _ stop _ ,” he manages, but nothing happens. The air grows cold; Kung’s feet kick in the air, the desperate kick of near-death. There’s something clogging in Din’s throat, making it hard to speak, hard to breathe, hard to make sense of what’s going on.

He pushes past it. “It’s alright, I’m ok.” Heat pulses behind his eyes. “I’m fine, you don’t have to – you can stop. Kid, you gotta stop.”

Kung spasms horribly, eyes blown huge. The kid’s little fists tremble, whole body trembles, and Din’s heart  _ aches _ . He presses his palms against the ground, vision blurring, and his lips are numb when he speaks.

“Kid, I’m  _ alright _ . I’m here.” He feels it, thinks it, pushes the words past whatever darkness is clouding the room. “It’s ok.  _ It’s ok _ .”

The thickness in the room, something tangible and  _ alive _ , slips into his throat and seems to strangle him for a half a moment before, suddenly, it recedes. A pressure against Din’s lungs lets up, and something dark and heavy seems to slither out of the door, leaving them alone and shivering in its wake. Din feels a million things at once, and then a small push of something almost apologetic against his wrist. The second binding snaps open with a hiss, and he’s free. 

Kung slumps to the ground behind him; he spares a glance - the alien’s breathing - and that’s the last of it. He has eyes only for the kid, who stumbles and falls the small distance to the ground. Din feels panic hot and present, stealing his breath again. He goes to stand but his legs protest loudly, so he crawls the space between them.

As soon as he gets there, the kid’s eyes flicker open. The anger is gone; instead, there is something raw, something like an open wound, bleeding in his eyes. His ears tilt, downcast, and Din sees as he takes in what’s left with a small, scared sound.

“I’m ok,” Din repeats, and then, “I’m sorry.” He says it and keeps saying it, and the kid reaches his little hands up and Din knows the gesture like it’s his own at this point. He grabs the kid and holds him to his chest and it’s like something dislodged inside of him finally clicks back into place.

This is when Cara decides to burst in. She barrels through the doorway, sweaty and panting, blaster out, and he sees as her eyes shoot from the dead pirates to Kung to the kid to Din. She sags, pressing a hand against the wall.

“Unbelievable,” she says, and the kid makes a small coo, and Din’s body decides it’s time to tap out. His vision crumples inwards and this time, he lets it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i live for your feedback so don't hesitate to leave a comment if you want! see you all next monday for an update of my other fic - and let me know if you want to see anything else in this universe, i'm not quite done writing mando yet:)


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